SIL International Publications

Agta Demographic Database: chronicle of a hunter-gatherer community in transition

Relation Text: 
SIL Language and Culture Documentation and Description 2
Statement of Responsibility: 
Headland, Thomas N., Janet D. Headland, and Ray T. Uehara
Issue Date: 
2007
Abstract: 

For the past half-century Thomas and Janet Headland have studied demographic change among the Agta, a hunter-gatherer population in the Philippines. Since the 1998 publication of Population Dynamics of a Philippine Rain Forest People, numerous scholars have asked about the raw data on which the Headlands based their study. Now those data are published with the full permission of the Agta people. Computer scientist Ray Uehara has worked with the Headlands to compile this database. This database consists of the records of 4,300 Agta individuals, 600 of whom are alive today. Of these, 284 are members of the San Ildefonso Agta, a subpopulation living on a peninsula separate from the larger Casiguran Agta Population on the mainland. Included in these records are the names, facial photographs, family histories, genealogies, and ancestors (dating back to the late nineteenth century) of today’s Agta. The data are complete with every birth, marriage, divorce, death, and in- and out-migration since 1950 to January 2010, for the 284-member San Ildefonso Agta subpopulation.

The Agta population has vital statistics that are extreme compared to industrialized humankind. These will be of interest to anthropologists, students of human history, and demographers. Today‘s Agta have an infant mortality rate of 220/1000 (vs. 7/1000 in the USA), a high total fertility rate of 7.0, and a life expectancy of just 23 years (vs. 78 years in the USA). Readers may use these data to check these and other demographic parameters, as well as for testing their own hypotheses of so-called primitive populations. The Agta Demographic Database provides a keyhole glimpse into how our human ancestors may have lived and died in prehistory. This is an ongoing work, to be re-released at intervals.

Version 2.0, 2011

Extent: 
20 p. + data files and reports
Table of Contents: 
  • Main article
    49227_Agta2011.pdf
  • Informed consent text
    InformedConsent.pdf
  • Agta database field descriptions
    49227_DatabaseFieldDescriptions.pdf
  • Data and user interface with photographs
    49227_Agta2011_AccessFull.zip
  • Data and user interface without photographs
    49227_Agta2011_AccessSmall.zip
  • Data in XML format
    49227_Agta2011_XML.zip
  • Data in CSV format
    49227_Agta2011_CSV.zip
  • All documents (article, sample reports, auxiliary documents)
    49227_Agta2011_docs.zip
Subject: 
Ethnography
Demography
Anthropology
San Ildefonso
Negritos
Hunter-Gatherers
Demography of Prehistoric Populations
Demographic Anthropology
Country: 
Philippines
Subject Languages: 
Content Language: 
Nature of Work: 
Domain SubType: